We started our day studying photographs of rain.  We thought about words that describe rain.  The children did a great job of coming up with words that described how heavy the rain is coming down in the photographs we studied.  I was hoping to get to a science lesson later in the day, but this will have to do for today.  Of course, no study of rain would be complete without a peek at somebody thoroughly enjoying the rain.  Enjoy!

In reading, we reviewed the short vowel e.  This is a tricky vowel that turns up in a lot of our work in CKLA.  We practiced writing consonant-vowel-consonant words and wrote a short sentence today on the whiteboards.  We started to make vowel sticks but will need to finish those another day.  We will use the vowel sticks to identify the vowel in three letter words.  
We also practiced writing another tricky word.  I introduced the word "the."  This is a tricky word because we have not learned the th digraph and the /e/ in this words is not the short sound the children are learning now.  So this is a word they must memorize.  We took time to practice writing it together on white boards by saying the word, saying and writing the letters in the word, and the saying the word again.  We do this to build fluency, so as they are writing and repeating, I slowly get faster as I am leading them in writing and spelling out loud.
In math we worked with longer and shorter.  We are making sure we get our words in the right place as we compare items that are longer or shorter.  We are also working hard not to use the words bigger and smaller, but are more specific in describing size.  
December is Diversity Month.  Today we learned about the word diversity.  We talked about the definition of diversity, what race is, and how diversity includes many ways we are different.  As we go through this month reading books and talking about diversity, we will also be very aware of how much we are also the same.  Before you watch this video, if you decide to, ask me to show you the word diversity and friend in sign language.  Enjoy this video.  I also put in a basic definition of diversity so you know how we are defining in class.  

Have a nice evening!
​Miss Wolfe

We had a quick "field trip" this morning to look at landforms.  This class is always ready for a trip!  They took pictures with their pretend cameras and enjoyed the beautiful landforms in some of our National Parks.  I'll put the video in below so you can enjoy it as well.  We looked at and named the different landforms.  There are only a few things in this video that are human-made and every other beautiful thing is from nature.  We also learned from our virtual guide, Billy Bluehair, how some of these landforms were made over millions of years.  Ask me to tell you the name of some of the landforms in the video.

In reading, we practiced reading simple consonant-vowel-consonant words.  We need a lot more practice with short vowels, so I will be adding extra work that we will do to help children with these tricky sounds!  I will be doing a quick assessment to see who has the vowel sounds and how is still learning them to make a couple groups.  Please don't be concerned if your child is still learning the short vowel sounds; they are tricky and they just haven't had enough practice with them.
In math, we worked first with number lines.  We talked about what we noticed, then how they increase by one when you move to the right and decrease to zero as you move to the left.  We played a fun game of Mind Reader where I think of a number and they have to guess the number.  We started by using a number line from 0-10.  One child would guess a number and I would tell them if it was more or less than that number.  We would cross out the numbers it couldn't be then, so they guessed 9, and the number was 4, I would say it was less than 9.  We knew it couldn't be ten so we would cross that out.  This game can be played with any number line, it doesn't have to be 0-10, it can be 5 - 25 if you like.  This is a great game to play if you find yourself waiting somewhere and have paper and a pencil.
We also talked more about measurement and rules for measurement.  We also reviewed some of the vocabulary used when measuring.  We will get a lot of practice this week measuring! 

Stay warm!
​Miss Wolfe